


Love Letter

by Antigone2



Series: UsaMamo Week 2020 [3]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Canon, F/M, around S I think, maybe early SuperS, or it would even work between R and S
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:54:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25550140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antigone2/pseuds/Antigone2
Summary: A white rectangle peeking out from Usagi’s school bag caught Mamoru's eye. Curiously, he pulled it out, not thinking it was anything private - her schoolbag was full of crumpled papers and mismatched notes and some candy bar wrappers, never anything personal. But he was surprised to see it was a folded piece of stationary, with a heart-shaped sticker as a seal.
Relationships: Chiba Mamoru/Tsukino Usagi
Series: UsaMamo Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1847353
Comments: 15
Kudos: 147





	Love Letter

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> The following fics written for the UsaMamo Week challenge on Tumblr! (come find me there, I'm idesofnovember).
> 
> The challenge is:
> 
> Day 1 - Silver Millennium (Chapter 1: Decoy)
> 
> Day 2 - Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask (Chapter 2: Truth Serum)
> 
> Day 3 - Usagi and Mamoru (Chapter 3: Love Letter)
> 
> Day 4 - Crystal Tokyo
> 
> Day 5 - AU
> 
> Day 6 - Free day
> 
> Day 7 - Mix and Match
> 
> Because I'm ... kinda rushing to keep up lol, this fic isn't as polished as I usually like before I submit. Hopefully you'll forgive an awkward phrase or two!

The book Mamoru was reading was interesting, but he hadn't actually made any progress on the page since Usagi had arrived.

She'd kissed his cheek, all soft and sweet, smelling like vanilla and outside, and proceeded to drop her bookbag on the floor, where it fell and half spilled out, and skip into the kitchen to rummage through his pantry and fridge.

He knew the routine: Soon she'd grab a snack - either something messy and sticky like nutella on bread, or something incredibly crumbly like seaweed crackers - and flop backwards onto his sofa, feet resting on his knees while she ruminated on her day around mouthfuls of food. It was by far the highlight of Mamoru's week.

He would always keep a book open and his eyes on the page, interjecting responses to Usagi when necessary, her cheerful chatter filling the usual silence of his apartment like a heady perfume. Mamoru only ever allowed himself small glances up to the gorgeous girl sprawled on his furniture with a careless beauty unlike any he'd known, in his world of proper manners and the conservatively dressed, quiet spoken women at his school.

She was intoxicating, and if he didn't tear his eyes away and attempt to focus on something else, he'd spend all day just gazing at her in fascinated wonder and trying not to kiss her. After all, Usagi needed to do her schoolwork, too.

This particular day, she danced from the kitchen to the bathroom, and while she was gone, a white rectangle peeking out from her school bag caught his eye.

Curiously, he pulled it out, not thinking it was anything private - her schoolbag was full of crumpled papers and mismatched notes and some candy bar wrappers, never anything personal. But he was surprised to see it was a folded piece of stationary, with a heart-shaped sticker as a seal. It'd been opened, breaking the sticker in half.

He was still trying to figure out what he was looking at, when his eyes read the text without even realizing he was doing so.

_"Dear Usagi-chan,_

_Everyday your smile makes my day brighter. You are so cute and pretty, I'd love to be your bo-"_

The sound of the door opening had him quickly dropping the letter and kicking it slightly back toward her bag, suddenly feeling as if the room was far too warm.

Sighing in contentment, Usagi flopped per usual on the sofa cushions, stockinged feet pressing against Mamoru's outer thigh.

She was just popping the last Pretz stick into her mouth when Mamoru finally cleared his throat and asked, "How was school?" His voice hadn't broken octaves in three years, but his question ended in a squeak of vocal fry worthy of any fifteen year old. He cringed, but Usagi didn't seem to notice.

"Meh," she said, shrugging and brushing the pretz crumbs from her fingers (onto his floor), "it was school."

The white square of paper was burning into Mamoru's peripheral, where it lay innocently on the plush carpet. "What's that?" he asked, in what he hoped was an incredibly natural tone, indicating the letter with a tilt of his head.

"Oh!" Usagi shifted away from him, sitting up and picking the paper off the floor. "It's a confession letter I got today." She turned it in her fingers, looking at it with a particular frown he recognized from when she confronted any homework problem. "I'm not sure what to do with it."

Mamoru blinked incredulously. "So… you… just kept it in your bag?"

"Where _else_ was I supposed to put it?" Usagi asked, with a teenage huff.

"So you're keeping it."

She pondered this, still looking at the paper in her hand. "Well, I mean, I couldn't just throw it away."

"Why not?" His voice was a bit more sulky than he intended.

"Oh, I'm just gonna throw it in the trash can right in front of Ta-kun?!" Usagi mimed throwing the letter, but kept it in her hand, "Or, in a school trash basket where he might find it if he had clean up duty?"

"Can I read it?" he asked, reaching for the paper.

"No!" Usagi clutched the letter to her chest in a way that made Mamoru want to rip the paper into shreds and burn it.

"Why not?" he said, settling back and pulling his hand back, as casually as he could.

"I guess… it seems… mean?" Usagi said, looking at him almost apologetically. "Like, 'thanks for your confession letter, I showed it to my boyfriend'? Ya know?"

She was right. And surprisingly astute. But wasn't that what he'd wanted by asking her to read it? To make something _theirs_ instead of hers and that boy's? The one she called "Ta-kun" when Mamoru was sure that was _not_ the name on this kid's birth register.

"So what are you going to do with it?"

Usagi pursed her lips, still not taking her eyes off the stupid thing. "I dunno. Is there some sort of love letter etiquette? I've never gotten one before."

Even though her tone was light and pondering, her last sentence hit Mamoru like a gut punch.

"I wouldn't know," he managed, wishing she'd just stop looking at the letter like it was some strange but fascinating artifact she'd discovered.

"You don't get mounds of love letter confessions from all the girls at school?" Usagi said, her voice ringing a bit strange as she (finally!) looked at him, brows together.

Mamoru swallowed, opening his book again and not seeing a thing on the page. "After high school it's called 'asking someone out', not 'confessing', Usako."

"Okay, so don't you get tons of girls 'asking you out'?" she drew out the phrase in a lower drawl apparently meant to imitate him, and made air quotes with her fingers.

"Not… really." The words on the page were just black dots, but he stared at the page like it'd answer for him. "I mean. Maybe sometimes. But I turn them down," he said. It came out with more exasperation than he intended.

"And I turned Ta-kun down," Usagi said, "Obvi."

"But you kept his letter." What was wrong with him? _Shut up, Chiba,_ he told himself, as he proceeded to not shut up. "And, why is this kid confessing to you anyway? Doesn't he know you have a boyfriend already?"

Usagi pressed her lips together, shrugged her shoulders almost sheepishly. "I mean, yeah… I think he might've but… ya know, Mamo-chan, most school kids don't have, like, an eons old past life love story. It's more normal to do it this way." She gestured to the letter, with a shrug.

Something hard and painful twisted in Mamoru's throat. "Did… did you want to…," he swallowed, "have a normal relationship?"

Usagi laughed a little, "Mamo-chan, we literally know our future offspring, I think the normal relation'ship' has sailed away a long time ago."

"I meant with a normal classmate." He wanted to take the words back as soon as they were out of his mouth, hanging in the air between them like he'd shot a gun.

Her mouth dropped open slightly in offended shock, and he hunched back over, pulling the book up to his face. "Never mind," he said quickly. "Forget it. It's nothing."

Then the book was yanked from his hands and thrown across the room, and he found himself with a very disgruntled reborn princess straddling his lap and glaring. "I will NOT 'never mind' anything, Mamo-chan! What the heck!"

"It's just…," he really should have listened to himself and shut up, "you always wanted to be a normal girl and nothing about how we got together is normal…"

Usagi growled in frustration, sending her exasperated gaze to the heavens.

"Yeah, a lot about this whole 'Sailor Moon' thing sucks," she said, looking at him with raised brows, "but _not_ the 'hot boyfriend with his own car and apartment' part!"

He laughed despite himself, and she grinned at him with those sparkling, mischievous eyes and… Damn, but she was good at breaking up the walls he didn't even realize he'd been building up since he saw the letter.

Mamoru cupped her face in his hand, curling his fingers through the soft curls of hair and tugging her down for a soft, long kiss. "Please don't keep that letter," he pleaded, mouth still lingering near hers. She leaned forward to claim his lips again, and that was the last they spoke of it.

It turned into a fairly nice afternoon after all.

* * *

A week or so later, Usagi came home to a letter - addressed and stamped and sent through the Japanese postal service. It was from Mamoru.

"What is it he sent you, dear?" Ikuko asked, looking at her daughter curiously.

Usagi's mouth fell open and her eyes softened as she read through the words on the - extremely fancy and expensive - stationary. "It's a love letter..."


End file.
